1964 Winter Olympics
1964 Winter Olympics
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1964 Winter Olympics

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1964 Winter Olympics

The 1964 Winter Olympics, officially known as the IX Olympic Winter Games (German: IX. Olympische Winterspiele) and commonly known as Innsbruck 1964 (Austro-Bavarian: Innschbruck 1964), were a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in Innsbruck, Austria, from January 29 to February 9, 1964. The city was already an Olympic candidate, unsuccessfully bidding to host the 1960 Games. Innsbruck won the 1964 Games bid, defeating the cities of Calgary in Canada and Lahti in Finland. The sports venues, many of which were built for the Games, were located within a radius of 20 km (12 mi) around Innsbruck. The Games included 1,091 athletes from 36 nations, which was a record for the Winter Games at the time. Athletes participated in six sports and ten disciplines which bring together a total of thirty-four official events, seven more than the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. The luge made its debut on the Olympic program. Three Asian nations made their Winter Games debut: North Korea, India and Mongolia.

The Soviet Union broke the record for the most gold and overall medals at a single Winter Olympics, with eleven and twenty five respectively, and finished first in the medal table. The USSR was followed by Austria, the host country, which won twelve medals, four of which were gold. Soviet athletes Lidia Skoblikova won all four women's races of speed skating and Klavdiya Boyarskikh won all three events of cross-country skiing. The Swedish cross-country skier Sixten Jernberg, a three-time medalist at these Games, became the first athlete to collect nine medals at the Winter Games. In alpine skiing, the French sisters Christine and Marielle Goitschel each obtained a gold and a silver medal. Before the Games, the Austrian army was mobilized to deal with the lack of snow. They brought thousands of cubic meters of it from Brenner Pass, close to the Italian border. The Olympic Winter Games was held for a second time at Innsbruck in 1976.

The Olympic Torch was carried by Joseph Rieder, a former alpine skier who had participated in the 1956 Winter Olympics.

The Games were affected by the deaths of Australian alpine skier Ross Milne and British luge slider Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, during training, and by the deaths, three years earlier, of the entire United States figure skating team and family members.

The city of Innsbruck submitted its first Olympic bid in the 1950s to host the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. The Austrians had a convincing bid and were viewed as the favorites to host the games. However, in the second round of the vote the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) selected the American city of Squaw Valley due to its ambitious designs.

A month later, the Innsbruck authorities decided to enter a bid again for the 1964 Winter Games. On 26 May 1959, during the 55th session of the (IOC) in Munich, West Germany, the Austrians were selected in a landslide for the Games with 49 votes in the first round, ahead of Calgary (Canada), which obtained 9 votes and Lahti (Finland), which did not receive a vote.

Despite the construction of the Berlin Wall by East Germany in 1961, which increased tensions between East and West and the fact that the East Germans wanted to have their own team, the IOC managed to maintain the United Team of Germany for the third consecutive Olympiad. In the 1960s, the IOC also discussed the Olympic participation of South Africa, a country immersed in the apartheid regime. During the Games in Innbruck, the IOC President Avery Brundage announced that the country would not be able to participate in the 1964 Summer Olympics because of its policy of racial segregation in sport. On the other hand, several African countries which had become independent joined the Olympic movement: the national Olympic committees of Algeria, of Congo, from Nigeria and Sierra Leone were recognized by the IOC during the session held during the Innsbruck Games. The number of IOC member nations increased to 114. In addition, the Innsbruck Games were used for the dissemination of political messages. Five Iranian students were arrested after marching with banners hostile to the shah. Twenty other Iranians, who demonstrated for the release of prisoners in their country, were also imprisoned.

The Organizing Committee of the IX Winter Olympics in Innsbruck 1964 was formed on 2 June 1959. Heinrich Drimmel, President of the Austrian Olympic Committee and Federal Minister of Education, was elected as its president and Friedl Wolfgang was elected as its secretary-general. The organizing committee was made up of the general assembly, the board of directors, and the executive committee, as well as eight sub-committees created to manage the different aspects of the Games: finance, construction, sports, transport, etc. accommodation and medical services, lodging, administration and checks.

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